R Raichev - The hunt for Sonya Dufrette

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

A death that is yet to take place but is believed to have happened some twenty years earlier? Antonia was to think afterwards that it was the kind of ingenious idea crime writers played around with in their idle hours, while luxuriating in a hot bath, or scanning the Times obituaries, beguiled by the seeming impossibility of it, but later discarded as too fanciful, not really worth working through and weaving a whole novel around.

It was 28th July. In the evening, her first back in London since she had returned from her walking tour in Germany’s Black Forest, her son and daughter-in-law paid her a visit, bringing with them her beloved granddaughter Emma. Antonia was delighted to see them. She was also glad of the diversion. Something had been troubling her the whole day – she had felt inexplicable twinges of anxiety, the odd sensation of standing under a dark cloud. Once or twice she had even felt like crying.

Emma seemed to have grown bigger in her absence, as bright and happy a child as could be, looking enchanting in her black shirt and baggy blue trousers, her golden curls peeping from under a black beret.

‘Look at her. She’s destined for the catwalk,’ David said.

‘No way,’ Bethany, her daughter-in-law, said. ‘She’ll be a writer, like Granny.’ Bethany was a former model and strikingly beautiful. David had met her four years before, in Cannes, where he had been sent by Tatler on a photographic assignment. Bethany was disillusioned with the whole pret-a-porter business and regarded the two years she had devoted to it as wasted.

‘One book does not a writer make,’ said Antonia with a smile. ‘Still, sweet of you to say so.’

‘Why-tah!’ Emma cried and banged her fists on the table. ‘Why-tah!’ She banged them again.

‘Yes. A writer, like Granny. Don’t do that, sweetheart… How is the new book going?’

‘Very slowly. Not well. Don’t ask.’ Antonia poured out tea and distributed pieces of Bakewell tart. She hadn’t been able to write a single word the whole day.

‘Gwanna!’ Emma cried. Antonia hugged her.

‘Aren’t detective stories -’ Bethany broke off.

Antonia looked at her. ‘Easier to write? Because they are easier to read? Well, they aren’t.’

‘Actually they are extremely hard to do,’ David said. ‘The kind my mother writes. Mystifying and enlightening at the same time. Having to play fair. Trying to be original. That’s probably the hardest – given that every trick has been done.’ He turned towards his mother. ‘That’s correct, isn’t it?’

‘Pretty much. At any rate no one thinks in terms of tricks any more. At least no one admits to it.’

‘You do want to get out of the library, don’t you?’ Bethany said. She put Bakewell tart in Emma’s mouth.

‘Well, I love the library dearly, but, yes, I would very much prefer to be able to write full-time.’

Antonia had for several years been librarian at the Military Club in St James’s. David went on, ‘As libraries go, that is the place to be – a highly desirable address within striking distance of Clarence House. Watering hole to the Great and the Good.’

‘And the not so good,’ Antonia said.

David gasped in mock horror. ‘You don’t mean there are old boys who misbehave?’

‘Well, somebody was found entertaining a young friend in his room – it turned out they had met only an hour earlier in Piccadilly.’

‘Ah, those military types – notoriously starved of affection. The Queen Mum used to visit some of her old chums there, didn’t she, while she could still get about with a stick? Wasn’t it suggested that she had a beau at the club, some not-so-moth-eaten commodore?’

‘Can’t say. Before my time.’

David had visited his mother at the club and loved every minute of it. He described it as an edifice designed exclusively for manly, or rather, gentlemanly habitation in the Edwardian manner. One walked into a haze of costly cigar smoke – the ‘heathen’s frankincense’. (He claimed he had actually heard one of the club members call it that.) The polished parquet floors were the colour of best-quality halvah and they had been covered with Persian rugs in soft greys, greens and muted yellows – slightly murky London shades. Oak-panelled walls. Winged armchairs. Revolving bookcases. Spittoons – had Beth ever seen a spittoon? (She hadn’t.) The coffee had been excellent – real Turkish coffee – so had the chocolate eclairs.

‘Nobody spits,’ Antonia pointed out. ‘They use them as ashtrays.’

‘The walls are covered with Spy cartoons and ancient royal photographs. Lord and Lady Mountbatten in the most incredible Ruritanian-looking robes. You know the one? Edwina looks pencil-thin, freakishly thin, almost anorexic

‘Was she a model?’ Bethany asked.

‘No, my sweet. She was a vicereine. She had affairs with Nehru and people. They also have the Goddesses cycle. Where did they get them? I mean Madame Yevonde’s thirties society ladies dressed up as goddesses. Lady Rattendone as Euterpe, Lady Diana Cooper as Aurora, Mrs Syrie Maugham as Artemis – it is the most unselfconscious high camp I’ve ever seen!’

‘Colonel Haslett bought them at an auction at Christie’s. Colonel Haslett is my boss,’ Antonia explained with a smile. ‘He’s at least eighty-five.’

‘I’d love to come again and take photos at the club. A la recherche du temps perdu kind of cycle. The old boys look like extras in a Merchant-Ivory film. Hairy tweeds and regimental ties. Some of them creaked alarmingly as they moved. Too good to be true. Must do it before they start kicking their respective buckets. You’ve noticed of course how they read The Times?’

‘They go to the obituaries first. Well, after a certain age one does, I suppose.’

‘Have you had any deaths recently?’ David suddenly asked. ‘I mean among resident members?’

Antonia frowned. ‘Several, yes.’

‘Your friend, the intellectual Major, no doubt suspects foul play? What was his name? My mother has an admirer,’ he told Bethany.

‘I have nothing of the sort.’ Antonia felt herself reddening.

‘Yes, you have. What was his name?’

‘I don’t know who you mean.’

‘Come on. I was there. I saw him making sheep’s eyes at you. He was chatting you up. All that rigmarole about murder mysteries resembling baroque opera was only a pretext to get your attention. He must know you’ve written a murder mystery.’

There was a pause. ‘He was right, actually,’ Antonia said. ‘Sex and power, jealousy and rage, despair, menace, violent death – you find them in baroque opera and in most murder mysteries. Especially violent death. That was clever of him.’

‘Death,’ Emma said. Amazingly she pronounced that one word perfectly.

‘What was his name? No, don’t tell me. Penderby. Major Horace Penderby.’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s Payne. Hugh Payne.’ Antonia found herself looking at Emma. For some reason her heart had started beating fast.

‘Major Payne. Oh yes. You fancy him too, don’t you? Well, he was a presentable sort of chap. Better-looking than Dad. Not as ancient as the others. Can’t be more than fifty-three or four. They say that fifty is the new forty.’

‘If fifty is the new forty, then forty’s the new thirty – which means twenty is the new ten, right?’ Bethany said. ‘Which means that I am fourteen. You are married to a girl of fourteen and have fathered a daughter by her. You’ve broken the law.’

‘No, no, it doesn’t work that way at all… What is Major Payne? Divorced? Bachelor?’

‘Widower. His wife died last year.’